


i looked across and fell in love

by stormchasers



Category: Renegades - Marissa Meyer
Genre: (i guess??), AU, Alternate Universe - Small Town, F/M, Friends to Lovers, i still haven't figured out tags rip, i'm so so so so so sorry this took me so long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 17:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormchasers/pseuds/stormchasers
Summary: “Me too,” Adrian said softly, and she forgot all about her nerves and Adrian not being Adrian, because he was in front of her now, and he was so familiar that she couldn’t think of anything except the fact that she loved him. She couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t loved Adrian, except maybe at their very first meeting about ten years ago. Ten years. Ten years that she had loved him more than almost anyone else in the world, ten years of them falling down and helping each other get back up again, ten years of the incomparable feeling of being truly known down to the soul.
Relationships: Nova Artino | Nightmare/Adrian Everhart | Sketch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	i looked across and fell in love

**Author's Note:**

> okay!! so this was SUPPOSED to be for the mm nets gift exchange when we had a complication with needing an extra fic, but it took me so long to finish because of school. i'm so so so sorry for this being so late but here it is now <3

Glancing outside, Nova resisted the urge to check her phone again. If there was a message, it would ring. There really wasn’t any point in checking it right now.

The snow was falling softly outside, snowflakes sparkling like fragments of stars coming down from the sky. There was only one car outside the diner, not that  _ that _ mattered. It wasn’t the car she’d been looking for, and in this small town there wasn’t really a need to drive that short of a distance.

She exhaled quietly. Tearing her gaze from the window, she once again glanced around the diner. There wasn’t a single part of this diner that she didn’t know as well as her own home. She’d spent half of her childhood here, laughing and losing her mind with Narcissa and Adrian. They’d ran through the diner to the annoyance of— well, pretty much anyone else. They’d run as if they could outrun time and all the long shadows that they hadn’t been able to understand back then. 

Once she’d gotten a little older, this had turned into lunch and homework, and then it hadn’t been just the three of them anymore. Adrian, always fast to make friends, had been put in different classes in eighth grade and had come back with Ruby and Oscar. Adrian had always been good at making friends. But before then, it had always been clear that Nova and Narcissa were his closer friends. It was fine; she  _ loved _ Oscar and Ruby. But last year, Narcissa had also started dating Danna Bell, and… well, Nova was feeling a little lonely. 

The diner had always been her safe place. Even when she was a child and times had been much more uncertain, even when everything with her uncle was happening… And as time went on, even with Adrian’s time being taken up by art and honor roll and other friends, the diner remained the place where she could spend time with him. Even if there were other people there, and even when he was focused on some art project. She liked exchanging glances with him over Ruby and Oscar’s obvious weak attempts at flirting, and she liked to curl up across the table from him and knit or work on homework, occasionally offering an encouraging word or two about his current work in progress. It didn’t matter, as long as he was part of her life in some way.

Except… lately he’d been pulling away even more. She wasn’t sure why, and she couldn’t exactly pinpoint an exact time when this had started. It probably wasn’t anything more than them simply growing up and growing apart, but it still hurt. Maybe that reason was what hurt the most. 

People grew up; friends grew apart. That was how the world worked. But not for her and Adrian.  _ Never _ for her and Adrian. 

Which was why she had been desperately anticipating this. They hadn’t hung out here together in over a week, which wouldn’t seem like a long time to most people, but for Nova and Adrian that was an eternity. It had been even longer since they’d been here alone. 

The last time she had seen Adrian, it had been only a brief moment of eye contact in the hallway. She wasn’t used to missing him like this. There was almost a physical ache. 

She was just starting to think that he would never come when she finally saw a familiar figure approaching the diner. She exhaled, wishing that she could say that she hadn’t been worried. 

“Hey,” he said as he slid into the booth. “I’m sorry I’m late. My mom needed my help with something.”

Nova sighed quietly in relief. “I’m glad you’re here now,” she said. She fidgeted with her bracelet. Was she—  _ nervous _ about this? There wasn’t anything to be nervous about. It was  _ Adrian _ , and she’d never had to be afraid when he was there. But Adrian hadn’t been acting very much like Adrian recently.

“Me too,” Adrian said softly, and she forgot all about her nerves and Adrian not being Adrian, because he was in front of her now, and he was so familiar that she couldn’t think of anything except the fact that she loved him. She couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t loved Adrian, except maybe at their very first meeting about ten years ago.  _ Ten years _ . Ten years that she had loved him more than almost anyone else in the world, ten years of them falling down and helping each other get back up again, ten years of the incomparable feeling of being truly  _ known _ down to the soul. 

"So," she said, scrambling for words to say. She sighed. "I missed you." The words slipped out before she could stop them, before she even knew she wanted to say them. There was something about Adrian that made her say things she didn't always mean to. 

"I missed you too," he said, and Nova could breathe again. It was so ridiculous of her to be so worried over this, and yet... And yet. In the back of her mind she kept repeating the words that snapped everything into place, the words that she would never dare to say out loud. She'd known this for quite some time, but... she hadn't wanted to admit it. She still didn't want to.

She studied him carefully. "Hey," she said quietly. "You okay?" He seemed miles away. She couldn't blame him; she herself had not been the most focused the past few weeks.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s kind of funny to think about this place. To think about how long we’ve been coming here. How much has changed.” He glanced up at her. “How much  _ we’ve _ changed.” He let his gaze fall back down to the table. “But I guess there are a lot of things that are still very much the same.”

“Like what?” Nova asked lightly. She wasn’t sure what to make of everything he had just said.  _ How much we’ve changed _ . Maybe he had changed, but she hadn’t. The world changed around them, but they would always be like this. She had never been able to cope with their relationship changing. Clearly. 

As far as the way she saw them, they were still the young children that had run around this diner like they would never be forced to stop. Except everything  _ had _ changed, and everything would change even more. They were seniors. They would eventually graduate, and get out of this town, and lose contact with each other. Or maybe they  _ wouldn’t _ get out of this town. At least not both of them. Nova loved this town and hated it, and she couldn’t wait to get as far away as possible. But she didn’t want to lose everything— she couldn’t lose  _ Adrian _ . She would sit in this diner her entire life if it meant that there was a possibility that she wouldn’t lose him. 

“Well, this diner hasn’t changed all that much,” Adrian said, jarring her out of her morbid speculation. 

She blinked at him. “I feel like it’s changed a lot, but it’s still the same. I don’t know how to explain it.”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah.”

Maybe the diner wasn’t the only thing they were talking about.

“It’s… like this,” she said, tracing the engravings on the wall. “Parts of the diner have been renovated, and the staff has changed, but it’s still here, with the same familiarity.” She glanced at the wall carvings. “People leave their names here, and new people add names, but the old ones are still there.” She brushed her fingers against them, feeling the familiar grooves of Gerard Jones and Sara Reynolds. “Remember when we used to make up stories about them?”

Adrian laughed. “Yeah. I recall Sara Reynolds having a lot of drama with Helena Perkins.”

“Why are all of these last names so terrible?” Nova mused. “They’re awfully… white.”

Adrian raised an eyebrow. “Why are you so surprised? Have you  _ seen _ this town?”

Nova burst out laughing. “You’re right.” She glanced further up the wall, her eyes settling on the quote that had perplexed her for years. “One cannot be brave who has no fear,” she read aloud dramatically. “What was our last theory on who wrote that?”

Adrian smiled. “Hmm, I believe we were thinking about a sort of nightmare creature that looked kind of like the Grim Reaper.”

Nova laughed again. “Oh my god. Yeah, I remember that you drew a picture of it and showed it to your mom so that she could be on guard against it.”

“ _ Someone _ encouraged me,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, regardless of who might have written it, I think it’s an interesting quote.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Well, I’m definitely not fearless.”

He glanced at her, almost as if he was surprised. “What are you afraid of?”

Her eyes snapped back to meet his. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been expecting him to ask that. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Losing my family again. I almost lost them forever when I was a child. And…” She faltered. “And I’m afraid of the future.”  _ And I’m afraid of losing you _ . In not saying that, another equally vulnerable admission had slipped out of her mouth. Maybe they were the same thing— what was a future without the one person who truly  _ knew _ her? She glanced down at her hands. “I don’t know if I’m more scared of having to leave everything behind, or if I’m more scared about… staying here forever.”

Adrian nodded. “For whatever it’s worth…” he said quietly, “I think you’re really brave.”

Nova looked at him in surprise—  _ really _ looked at him. _No_ , she wanted to say. Out of the two of them, he was the brave one. He was one of the bravest people she knew. 

But she didn’t say it. 

Instead, she reached out and stole one of his fries. It was easier than saying something that was completely true but also terrifying to speak out loud. She loved him; he loved her right back. They both knew it. There was no need to complicate things further. 

“Hey!” he said, in a mock angry hiss as he swatted her hand away. They’d been stealing each other’s food for a long time now. Neither of them seemed to mind all that much. The corner of his mouth was turned up in a ghost of a smile, and his dark eyes were sparkling, even as he fought Nova over the fry. His glasses were a little crooked, as always, and all she could think was  _ I love you _ . She would add that to the growing list of things she couldn’t say to him.

Instead, she popped the fry into her mouth, pleased that she successfully stole it, as if that was a feat that required intense skill. He always let her get away with it. 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about change,” Adrian said, eating one of his own fries. Lame. It was much more fun to steal food that you could’ve easily gotten from your own dish. “And what stays the same.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, glancing up at him. “And what were your conclusions?”

He tapped his fingers on the table quietly. “Things change, but change isn’t always a bad thing.”

Nova stiffened. He was right, but she didn’t like thinking about that. When it came to her and Adrian maybe growing apart from each other, change was the worst thing Nova could imagine. 

“And not all change is permanent,” Adrian continued. “And just because something changes doesn’t mean it’s not the same at its core.”

“How so?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“Like this diner,” he said. “You said it yourself. It’s changed, but at its heart, it’s the same.”

She nodded. “What are…” She cleared her throat. “What are you trying to say here?” She knew him, and she knew that there was something specific he was trying to tell her, but she couldn’t for the life of her decipher what it was. 

Adrian shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. There was a heartbeat of silence. “Maybe it relates a little bit to your fear of the future.”

Nova raised an eyebrow. Maybe it did, and maybe he knew her a little too well and was close to the true reason behind that fear. 

“We’ve changed a lot since we were children,” Adrian said simply.

Nova tensed, unsure where he was going with this. The fear of losing him was far greater than the danger of him walking away, but she couldn’t take that chance. “It feels weird to think that we’re not children anymore,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” Adrian murmured. He met her eyes again, and it took everything in her to not look away. “We’ve changed so much, but we’re still sitting here together. So maybe… change doesn’t ruin everything?”

Nova sighed. “Why do you  _ know me _ so well?” she asked, pouring annoyance into her voice when in reality she was anything but annoyed. 

Adrian smiled, and she wished that she could preserve that smile in her brain so that she could see it forever. “Maybe the best-case scenario isn’t that the world changes and we stay the same forever, but that we can change and still always come back to each other.”

Nova felt her heart catch in her throat, and she thought she might just spill out a love confession then and there. But she kept her lips closed, and by the time she opened them, something entirely different slipped out. “I’d like that,” she said, and perhaps that wasn’t all too different from that confession she’d feared. 

“So,” Adrian said, smiling softly, “promise to change and try to stay in each other’s lives still?”

Nova hesitantly smiled back. “Promise.” They linked pinkies in an action that was so familiar from when they were kids. As they pulled back, Nova closed her eyes and hoped desperately that they would be able to keep that promise.

* * *

A couple days later, they met up at the diner once again. This time, Nova was the one who was late, despite her best attempts. 

“Sorry,” she said, out of breath, as she approached their booth. “Evie had an emergency, and—” She stopped short, glancing at the table. “You already ordered?”

Adrian grinned. “Sorry,” he said. “I only stole one fry.”

“You… memorized my order?” she asked. She didn’t know why she was so surprised. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been ordering almost the same exact thing for the past ten years. 

“I know you, Nova,” he said. It was those simple words that made her pause. Of  _ course _ he knew her. That was what she’d been constantly thinking about the last time they met here, wasn’t it? But it was different to see such an obvious and concrete example of how well he knew her, and such a blatant display of affection. She was sure that there were a lot of people who knew her usual order, but she didn’t know if all of them would do that. As she sat down, she realized that he’d already given her his pickles. Yet another show of how well he knew her.

“I know,” she found herself saying. “I know you know me.” She smiled softly. “I know you, too. And thank you.”

They settled into their usual rhythm, eating and talking about— well, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. There was something special about that, about the way that they could talk about nothing together and make it mean everything.

“Oh, hold on,” Adrian said suddenly. “I have an art piece that I wanted to get your opinion on.”

Nova nodded, leaning forward a little so that she could see it.

“Here, come over to my side so you can see it better,” Adrian suggested. Nova paused, then walked over to the other side of the table, sitting next to Adrian. There was nothing very unusual in this— she’d done this many times to look closer at an art piece that Adrian was working on. But that was usually when he was actually working on it at that moment, so he couldn’t just hand it to her. She wasn’t sure why he wanted her over here this time. It didn’t matter; it didn’t mean anything. She was just deluding herself thinking that it meant something. Though something about this did feel different, somehow.

She inspected his latest sketch. It was actually split into three parts, each depicting a similar scene. The first showed what seemed to be a diner booth— the very one they were sitting in right now. A girl and a boy sat across from each other, laughing together. “Any chance this was… inspired by something in particular?” Nova asked. 

Adrian laughed softly. “A pretty good chance,” he said. “I mean, the bracelet she’s wearing looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?”

Nova peered closer at it, her heart warming and breaking in two when she saw that it did, in fact, look awfully familiar. She brushed her fingers over her own bracelet. Moving her eyes down to the second part, she saw a diner that looked very similar. The tablecloth was different, and outside the window, it seemed that the winter had passed and spring had turned to summer. But the major difference was that there was no one sitting there. She glanced at Adrian. It felt like her worst fears, drawn out in the sketchbook of one of the few people who could see them. 

“Look at the last part,” Adrian said, as if he knew what she was thinking. Of course he knew what she was thinking.

She examined the last part, the tug in her heart too much to ignore this time. It showed, once again, that same diner. But the tree outside was starting to lose its leaves, and she assumed that the seasons had changed once again. And this time, instead of the seats being empty, there was a boy and a girl once again. They seemed to be the same ones from the first part. Well. More specifically, they seemed to be Nova and Adrian once again. Except… Adrian was a little taller, and her hair was a little shorter. They were… a little older. And yet, still here. She exhaled softly, leaning back. She didn’t cry often, and she didn’t think she’d cry now, but… maybe it was a little hard to keep herself from crying right now. And she didn’t want to get any tears on it.

“Is this your way of proving your point from earlier?” she asked lightly.

Adrian laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “I guess I wanted to express that. In the best way I know how to.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Thank you.”

Once again, not knowing what to say, she stole a fry. “I’m really glad you made it,” she said at last. They fell back into their rhythm of talking about everything and nothing, and sometimes not talking at all and just existing together. Nova didn’t move back to the other side of the table.

Her phone chimed with a text, and she checked it. It was Danna, to whom Nova had mentioned that she was meeting with Adrian to earlier. 

**Danna** :  _ Tell him. _

Nova blinked, leaving the message on read and turning off her phone. Maybe… maybe she  _ would _ . She glanced at the wall, staring at the names they’d carved there so long ago. Then she glanced up at the quote they’d theorized about.  _ One cannot be brave who has no fear _ . Okay. So, maybe she was _very_ full of fear. But she could be brave. And she was so close to losing Adrian, even if they would keep in contact, so she figured that it was best to tell him before they both left this town.

And then she looked at Adrian.

“What is it?” he asked when he noticed her staring at him.

She smiled, feeling more at peace than she had in a while. “I…” She leaned into him, her heartbeat quickening. Maybe what she needed to say didn't have to be dramatic. Some things could just... be said in a few simple words. And maybe the world wouldn't end if she decided to take a risk. 

“I love you,” she said softly, pouring all of her feelings into those words so that he would know that this  _ I love you _ was different from all the ones that had come before it over the years.

He smiled at her, and she knew that he understood what she was saying. “I love you too,” he said, and it was in direct response to everything she hadn’t said out loud.

Nova closed her eyes in relief. Everything was okay. She was with the boy that she’d loved for years, and there weren’t any secrets between them anymore. She could… she could breathe now.

She still wasn't sure about the future. She couldn't quite hold back the fear of losing him. But... she would have to trust that they would find their way back to each other no matter what happened. The seasons would change. _They_ would change. But she was starting to believe that change was necessary for things to last. 

Nova Artino couldn't name many things in the world that lasted, but she would do everything to make sure that she and Adrian would be one of them.  
  



End file.
